One of the most anticipated superheroes to make their MCU debut is Namor, who plays the antagonist in the upcoming Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Played by Tenoch Huerta, Namor is one of the oldest Marvel superheroes, and one of the most powerful.
However, it turns out Huerta actually had to learn how to swim for the role, as Namor is the ruler of an underwater kingdom named Talokan (Atlantis in the comics).
On the official Black Panther: Wakanda Forever twitter page, Huertas was asked what it was like to have to learn how to swim the same time as learning the role.
When he was originally asked about his swimming ability, Huertas said he joked that he “never drowned before.” When they found out he was joking they told him that “OK you should learn how to swim.”
One positive thing that came from the experience, Huertas said, was that he was asked to “hold his breath for a long time” and that now he “can hold it for five minutes long. I’m so proud of me.”
One of the more interesting things about Namor is the deep Mesoamerican roots in Talokan. Director Ryan Coogler said Namor’s underwater kingdom was changed from Atlantis because he wanted to give audiences something they hadn’t seen before.
“There have been a lot of representations and creative depictions of Atlantis based off of Plato’s Atlantis, the Greco-Roman concept of a city sunk into the sea. That idea exists in a lot of different ways. We wanted our film to exist alongside those movies and be different. It was really out of respect to the audience, not wanting to give them something similar to other things that have come before it.”
You can witness Huertas’ swimming abilities in person when Black Panther: Wakanda Forever washes into theaters Nov. 11.
